Wireless communication networks are increasingly being used for wireless communications with various types of wireless user equipment. The wireless network itself may include a plurality of wireless base stations, also commonly referred to as “base stations”, “radio access nodes”, “RAN nodes”, “NodeBs”, “eNodeBs” or simply as “nodes”, that define a plurality of cells, and a core network that controls the base stations and interfaces the base stations with other wired and/or wireless networks. The nodes may be terrestrial and/or space-based. The nodes communicate with wireless User Equipment (UE), also referred to as “user equipment”, “wireless terminals” or “mobile stations” or simply as “terminals”, using radio resources that are allocated to the wireless network. The radio resources may be defined in terms of time (for example, in a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) system), space (for example, in a Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA) system), frequency (for example, in a Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) system) and/or code (for example, in a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) system). The nodes may use licensed and/or unlicensed frequency spectrum. Radio resources may be assigned to UEs by the wireless network upon initial communication and may be reassigned due to, for example, movement of the UEs, changing bandwidth requirements, changing network traffic, dynamic scheduling, UE Quality of Service (QoS), etc.
Many wireless systems, including Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless systems, establish Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) links composed of paired frequency carriers. The paired spectrum includes a downlink frequency carrier for transmission from a node to user equipment and an uplink frequency carrier that is spaced apart in frequency from the downlink frequency carrier, for transmission from the user equipment to the node, to thereby establish a frequency division duplex communications link between the node and the user equipment. A given user equipment may operate using a single carrier pair comprising a carrier from an uplink frequency band and a carrier from a downlink frequency band, and can be subsequently handed over to another carrier pair using another carrier from the uplink frequency band and the downlink frequency band. Alternatively, the user equipment may communicate using multiple carriers in one or more multiple downlink frequency bands and one or multiple carriers in multiple paired uplink frequency bands.